Archive of Our Own ^beta

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i. “Who knows, if I never showed up, what could’ve been. There goes the loudest woman this town has ever seen; I had a marvelous time ruining everything.”

2002

If you ask, you might hear that Edie Lehnsherr is a nice girl. A girl with a little bit of a short temper, a smile a little on the sharp side, an average player on the soccer team (with German parents who screamed loudly at matches with their thick accents, much to the relative mortification of their daughter). Average grades, average-enough clothes, average friends. Part of the 98% of humans who are baseline. From the outside, nothing remarkable to speak of.

Really, you might not hear anything at all. You might be asked “who?”

Jakob Eisenhardt is much the same, average all around. Another face in the crowd of the generally average student population at their average high school in their small, mostly Jewish town in southwestern Pennsylvania. He’s a little bit spoiled, with a little bit more money than everyone else, but not close to being a rich kid. You might see him smoking in the back parking lot of the school during fourth period some Wednesdays, but that’s the closest he gets to being any kind of a bad boy.

It seemed natural enough to go to homecoming together, since their friends ran in the same circles, and neither of them had anyone else to go with. It didn’t have anything to do with feelings. But now, sitting on the roof of the school on a Friday night, three weeks after the dance, Edie wonders if she needs to rethink that position.

Jakob’s face is pale in the moonlight, hands catching the silver glow as he gesticulates wildly. The square set of his jaw is nice, Edie decides, and she likes the way he speaks of poetry and philosophy, reminiscent of a simpler time that she never lived, but has read of. On occasion. For English class.

Really, that’s a little bit of a lie; she never finished Romeo and Juliet. But Sarah Aarons was having a party the weekend she was supposed to, and she did well enough on the book report with some help from her friend Sam. But poetry is always more interesting when spoken by a living, breathing person.

Later that night, when Jakob leans in to kiss her, she meets him halfway. She may as well.

It could be interesting.

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ii. “Someday I’m going to live in your house up on the hill.”

2003

Jakob has clear blue eyes that make you feel like he’s hanging on your every word. Years later Edie wonders if her love for him was really just a love of being seen as someone worth listening to, and not the whirlwind romance she thought their relationship was.

But the summer after graduation Edie harbors no such thoughts. She’s deeply in love with the half-poet boy who has promised her a life of adventure.

Her parents don’t approve. She leaves their house with a suitcase of clothes, her copy of the Tanakh and her beat-up old BlackBerry, her grandmother’s locket tucked beneath her shirt.

Jakob bought a van. It has everything — a small kitchenette, a bed big enough for the both of them, a fold-out shower on the outside. It’s in no way the life Edie is used to — and that’s why she wants it.

“We’ll travel the coast,” Jakob says, dreams shining bright in his eyes, and Edie grins her shark smile at him as they set out on the open road.

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iii. “And for the first time I had something to lose, and I guess we fell apart in the usual way.”

2003

Edie walks out of the drugstore bathroom with shaking hands.

Jakob is inspecting the chip selection, with no idea what she’s just learned.

“Jakob,” she says, tugging at his arm and trying to pull him away from the aisle. He grins at her, forgetting the chips, and lets her lead him out of the store.

“Babe, what’s going on?” He asks, a quirk in his brow, leaning against the front of the van.

She takes a deep breath. “I’m pregnant.”

His face goes from casually cool to absolutely shocked within a fraction of a second. “You’re-Are you sure?”

Edie nods, feeling a little smile tug at her lips. “I’m sure. I just took a test.”

“Oh… Wow… Um… Are you going to keep it?”

“Jakob, of course I am. Just think, we’re going to have a baby.”

When it first occurred to her that the strange symptoms she was getting could be pregnancy, she felt scared. But then she looked at the boy that she loved and the open road before them; thought of all the beautiful things they’d seen and all the places that they would see and all the magic and joy and light in the world and she thought that maybe, just maybe, bringing another person into that world would be worth it if she could show them all those wonders.

She hugs Jakob, and his arms come up around her and hold her just as strong as ever.

She doesn’t see the look in the half-poet’s eyes, the fear writ in his features.

He leaves her at a small town gas station a month later, Edie coming out of the store to find her suitcase on the sidewalk, a handwritten note sitting on top.

I’m sorry.

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iv. “Start a new life together in a different place, know that love is how all these ideas came to be.”

2003

Edie doesn’t realize she’s in labor until it’s already far, far too late.

She’s been having braxton-hicks contractions for weeks now, and she’d thought that this was just a particularly bad episode, so she kept working. Her due date wasn’t for another week and a half, anyways, and she had her maternity leave all worked out with her two employers; one of whom, Jessica, is also the woman who took pity on her and let her stay in her spare room. She and Edie quickly became friends, though it doesn’t lessen the guilt Edie feels at burdening her like this.

That’s what she’s thinking about right now, contracting on the back porch of the bakery. She’s going to be out nearly two weeks early.

“Hey, Edie, I think it’s been ten minutes…” One of the two workers on her shift, Josh, says, trailing off as he sees her holding her stomach and breathing heavy.

“I uh, I’m in labor.” She manages to say, and his eyes widen.

“Oh, um! Okay! Um! Should I call 911? Or-”

“Just get Maddie!”

Josh disappears, and Maddie, the other worker on their shift and a med student a few years older than Edie, comes out. She takes Edie’s hand.

“It’s gonna be okay.”

Precipitous labor, that’s what the doctors will tell Edie it was, once she and her newborn baby are taken to the hospital. Labor that takes under three hours, that comes on unexpectedly. Indeed, she was only pushing for about thirty minutes. They tell her it was more painful than a regular birth would be, brought on by factors like her son being a rather small and early baby, or possibly a flexible birth canal.

But before all that, before the pristine, sterile environment of the hospital, Edie is sitting on the back porch of the bakery, holding her son, wrapped in a spare kitchen towel covered in apples and cupcakes.

“He’s beautiful,” Maddie breathes quietly, like she knows how sacred this moment is, and doesn’t want to ruin it. “Do you have a name?”

Edie considers. She’s been flipping through baby books for months now. She’s compiled lists of names that she likes, thinned them down. The final boy names had been Erik, Max, and Magnus.

“Erik,” She decides, looking down at him, trying it out. “Erik.”

Serendipitously, he opens his eyes at that moment. She knows that it’s probably just a coincidence, but it feels like more. It feels like fate.

His skin is paler than hers, like Jakob’s, but the small locks of hair on his head are her own rusty brown, and his eyes are her own clear gray, mirroring her own gaze back up at her.

Edie smiles at him, and he blinks, seeming to consider her, newborn eyes gliding across her face like he’s trying to gain purchase.

“Erik Magnus Lehnsherr,” she says, “Welcome to the world, Schatz.”

The doctors will tell her that her son has the X gene, the mutant gene, and a high probability of expressing it. They ask if she wants to leave him in the care of the mutant foster system (even as a baseline, she’s heard nightmarish tales about it). She holds her son a little tighter and decides that, even if his power is something destructive, even if it costs her everything to help him control it, it doesn’t matter. She already knows she’d give the world for her son, she’s known that since she first held him.

Mutant or not, they are each other’s family. And that’s all that matters.

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v. “Your little hand’s wrapped around my finger, and it’s so quiet in the world tonight.”

2004

Erik is a very quiet baby, for which Edie is grateful. She’d been nervous about staying with Jessica with a screaming, crying infant – but Erik only ever whines when he’s hungry. Screaming fits are fairly uncommon, and keep getting less common once he hits three months.

At that age, he does tend to stare, though, in an unsettling kind of way. He gazes at everyone with a stony look. He’s borderline frowning.

Sometimes a little voice in the back of Edie’s head will wonder if he resents her, like he knows he’s been born into anything but a normal life. Do babies feel resentment? She doesn’t know, but the feeling always dissipates as quickly as it comes. Erik smiles happily when she hands him the toy he wants, or reaches out to grab her fingers with a sweet look on his face, and every once in a while he’ll laugh and it’s the best sound she’s ever heard.

He starts babbling around six months, and every once in a while she swears he looks right at her when he says “mama.” Once he’s a year old, Edie knows he knows who she is and what “mama” means, as well as “isska” for “Jessica,” who takes care of him fairly often.

Jessica’s older, and mostly retired from her bakery. Her husband had been some moderately rich CEO of some sort before his passing, so she doesn’t worry about money the way Edie does, and only works when she enjoys it. Meanwhile, Edie works her job at the bakery and then a telemarketer job as well, trying to save every last penny. She vows to herself that Erik will be able to go to college if he wants to, without putting himself deep in debt. If that means she’s cutting a few corners on herself, then fine.

One day, when Edie gets home from the bakery, Jessica and Erik are sitting on the floor in the living room together, Erik happily holding his favorite toy (a stuffed shark that Edie bought him).

He looks at her when she opens the door, smiling, and says “Mama!” He drops his toy, looking like he’s making to crawl towards her, and then furrows his brow. Placing a hand on the coffee table, he stands up. He’s been doing that lately, and it’s adorable. Edie grins. “Hi, mein Sohn, how was your day?”

Then, suddenly, he’s taking a step forward. And another. And another. Edie gasps and moves a little closer, squatting down with her arms out for him.

“Come here, Schatz, you can do it,” Edie says, repeating the phrases in German. Erik continues toddling forward, balance dubious but determination obvious.

Edie sweeps him into her arms once he reaches her, smiling big and about ready to cry. Jessica cheers, and Erik laughs as Edie spins him around.

Erik keeps walking and growing and learning and, before Edie knows it, he’s three years old, and he’s talking to her in full sentences and drawing pictures that Jessica magnets onto the fridge with a smile. He’s shown no sign of mutant abilities yet, but loves pretending to be a shark at bath time and swears that there is a “big fire monster bird with sharp fingers” under his bed.

Edie knows, even through all the exhaustion and the rather unremarkable passing of her twenty-first birthday about a year ago, that this life is going to work.

It’s going to work.

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vi. “I took the supermarket flowers from the windowsill, I threw the day-old tea from the cup.”

2008

“Jesska’s not… coming back?” Erik asks, looking up at Edie with wide, sad eyes. She reaches for her son, brushing his hair from his face and pulling him into a hug.

“No, Schatz, I’m so sorry. Jessica… has gone to a better place.”

“Can we visit?” His voice is muffled, but Edie can hear the hope in it…

…Which is why it pains her so much to tell him that no, they can’t visit.

“She’s… Erik, you remember how we found that bird outside the bakery, the one who ran into the window?”

“The dead one?” Erik pulls away a little bit, his expression horrified at the memory.

“Yes. Remember what I told you?”

“He’s in bird heaven in the clouds, his body didn’t work anymore because of the window…” Erik recalls quietly, face still upset and unsure.

“Exactly. See, Jessica was getting older, and when people get older their bodies start to slow down, and then when the time comes they also stop working. So now Jessica’s in heaven, with her family.”

“But-But we’re her family too, mama!” Erik says, and his voice is wobbling, the boy obviously holding in tears.

“Oh, I know, I know, Schatz. And you know what? She loved us so much. You were the grandson that she never got to have, you know that? And everything she ever taught you, and every memory that you and I have of her, means that she gets to live on through us.”

Erik nods, but can’t escape the tears running down his face, throwing his arms back around Edie and holding on tight as he sobs.

“I’m sorry, Schatz,” She whispers to him.

She’s so busy making sure Erik’s okay and helping with funeral arrangements and stressing about where they’re going to live and how she’s going to pay for child support that she nearly forgets to grieve for herself.

Standing in the small crowd at her funeral, Edie finally breaks down. Quietly. She tries not to make a sound, so maybe Erik, holding her hand and looking straight down at his shoes, might not notice his mother crying.

Jessica was practically her mother. More than that, she was a confidant, a friend. They were family, and Jessica, Edie, and Erik all fit together better than Edie ever fit at her own home.

She’s lost that belonging. That mentorship. That support.

At least, she thinks that. Later, Jessica’s lawyer will hand her a letter, where Jessica will explain that the apartment and the business had already been called for by her nieces, but her savings, every last bit of them – those were for Edie and Erik.

With those funds, they manage to get an apartment one city over, one with a few jobs Edie can work and a good school for Erik to go to next year.

When Erik says that he loves their new apartment, Edie tells him it was a gift from Jessica, and he smiles.